"Sara? Sara Sidle?"
Sara spun in place from where she was studying the displayed articles detailing the accomplishments of Harvard's chemistry lab and regarded the man trotting toward her with no small amount of suspicion. "That's me."
"I can't believe this!"
Apparently, she was supposed to know him. Six feet, nicely muscled without overdoing it, clean shaven, curly brown hair...he was talking again.
"Man, it's been what, ten, fifteen years?" He shook his head and ran his hand through his hair, grinning hugely. "You haven't changed a bit."
"I, ah..." She squinted at him. Still no glimmer of recognition. "I'm sorry - this is really embarassing, but who are you?"
A blush colored his cheekbones and he ducked his head. "Wow, ouch. You'd think the person you joined the Mile High Club with would...uhm..."
"Ken Fuller." Stunned, she stared at him, and memories began rushing back. "You shaved. And - you broke your nose."
He laughed. "Yeah, well, Kim made me shave the beard off."
"Kim?" She raised an eyebrow. "Not Kim Delacroix."
"We just had our second daughter," he proclaimed proudly. "Want to see pictures?"
A thousand alarm bells went off in Sara's head and she brought the binder she was holding up in self-defense. "No - that's - ah - Ken - "
He looked at her curiously for a moment, and then shrugged it off. "Yeah, you're right, we have to get to work. Follow me - we're thinking 219 would work. You remember the room, don't you?"
Sara groaned theatrically. "Third-year organic chemistry. Eight AM Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And I'd tried so hard to repress it."
Ken laughed as they walked toward the stairwell. "Don't take this the wrong way, but - you're not at all what I expected. I mean, the memo said I was supposed to meet a Mrs. Grissom. I guess they mixed up the names or something. Anyway, it's good to see you again."
She froze in the middle of the hallway and clutched the binder so tightly she was sure it would slice through her hands, flesh and bone, blood on the shining tiled hallways of Harvard University's chemistry building. Ken continued ahead, and didn't notice that she hadn't followed him until he reached the doorway to the stairwell.
"Sara? You okay?"
"I'm - " She bit back "fine" and swallowed hard. "I filed for divorce this weekend."
His hand slid down the doorjamb from where he'd placed it to turn and look for her. "Oh." The drone of a TA teaching a first year physics lab section filled the air as Ken struggled for words. "I'm...sorry."
A thousand words were circling in panicked streams through her mind, and none of them would combine to form a coherent sentence. She opened her mouth to blurt out something, anything, and found that it was heavy and dry.
"It's okay," she finally rasped out, the words drowning out the nearby physics lesson. "It's okay, y'know?" She instructed her leg to bend and take a step forward, and the other followed suit. "219, you said? Does it still have that hideous peach paint job?"
"Oh, yeah," he confirmed, obviously relieved to end the awkwardness. "But it has a fume hood, and the capacity you said you thought you needed."
~*~
It was nearly noon by the time Sara returned home and dumped her purchases on the counter. She'd stopped by a nearby market and picked up some fresh fruit and vegetables to replace her waning supply. She hummed softly as she arranged the various legumes in the fridge and cabinets, and had just dug her thumbnail into an orange to begin to peel it when there was a knock on the door.
She set the orange on the counter and stuck her thumb in her mouth to suck off the bitter juices as she crossed to the door. A quick peek through the Judas hole told her it was her neighbor's adolescent son, Jesse, standing with a sheepish grin on his face.
"Hey, Jesse," she said, leaning on the half-open door.
"This got left for you today," he told her, holding out a small package. "Mom brought it into our apartment 'cause she was worried about someone taking it, or doing something funny to it," he added by way of explanation. "It's from Las Vegas," he continued. "That's pretty cool."
Sara's heart skipped two full beats as she took the package with numb fingers. "I used to live there," she told him, and forced herself to look down at the return address. Greg Sanders. "It's from a friend," she told him. "Probably a late Christmas present."
"Cool," he repeated, bobbing his head and sticking his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. "Anyway, just bringing it over. See you around."
"You too, Jesse," she said with a smile, and closed the door.
Sara set the package down on the counter beside the flattened grocery bag and traced the return address with a finger. She wasn't sure if she was relieved or disappointed that the package was from Greg. Grinding her teeth furiously, she pushed those thoughts from her mind and opened a drawer to get out a pair of scissors.
Coffee. She grinned as she reached into the box and pulled the bag out, a match to the one she had used that morning to set up the coffee pot. Blue Hawaiian coffee. She opened the cabinet and set the full bag next to its nearly empty counterpart, shaking her head in amusement.
He wouldn't have just sent the bag with no explanation, not Greggo, and she turned back to the small box to find several sheets of paper folded in the bottom. She tipped the box upside down to spill them out on the counter, and separated them by sender.
Greg and Nick both sent long letters of several pages each, and Catherine and Warrick short notes that she read right there. Carefully bland, impersonal inquiries about the weather (it must be such a change from Las Vegas) and the lab (how was working for the legendary Thomas Roman?) and a few lines about interesting cases they'd had in the past few weeks. Not a hint of emotion, or of worry - in fact, carefully the opposite.
She couldn't help herself. She looked back in the box, just in case.
There were no more letters.
~*~
The alarm woke her after five hours of fitful sleep, an hour earlier than she usually set it for, and for a moment she couldn't remember why, and then she saw the two letters on the nightstand and a wistful smile touched her lips.
The bath salts Catherine had given her as a going-away gift were still half-full and on the very top shelf of her medicine cabinet. Tall as she was, she had to stand on the tips of her toes to get the jar down without the risk of breaking it. She chose the peaches and cream partition, digging in with the little wooden spoon and spreading the crystals out evenly into the steaming water. A few minutes later, the tub had filled entirely and the bathroom smelled of steam and peaches.
Toes in first, and she nearly curled her foot in on itself, the water was so hot. A few seconds later, she tried again, and stepped into the tub, lowering herself inch by inch and then settling the bath pillow beneath her neck. The scalding water worked its magic, and she could begin to feel the tense muscles caused by the nightmare soften and uncoil.
Hey Sara,
I hope you like the coffee. I remembered you seemed happy to get the bag I gave you as a going-away gift, and when I ran the numbers, I guessed you must be almost out by now.
I got to do a home invasion last week with Nick and Warrick. It was pretty cool, even if they didn't let me do much more than fingerprint and photograph. Nick says there might be room on the team soon, and that I should put in an application. He thinks I've got a pretty good chance of getting the job. Oh, and as for the room - I bet you were about to kill me there for not saying why it might be there - Ecklie's gone on to greener pastures and joined up with the FBI. I guess all that bootlicking during the Strip Strangler case finally paid off. He's in Virgina supervising one of their labs. Anyway, Catherine put her name into the hat for the promotion. She says it would give her more time to spend with Lindsey now that she's in middle school and at "that age."
Jacqui says hi. She just stopped by to pick up some evidence that Warrick wanted me to extract DNA from before sending it down to her to print. She says to recommend you this little bar on Landsdowne Street. Apparently there are nachos to die for. She's gone now - let me know if you end up going to the bar so I can tell her. She'd like that.
It's same-old, same-old here. We got a new sheriff, and he's an even bigger jerk than Mobley and Atwater were. He's started this whole campaign to get Las Vegas away from its Sin City reputation. In other words, take all the fun out of the place. So he's putting a lot of pressure on the PD to work harder. It's been pretty stressful around here.
Yes, it's been stressful, and yes, I'm still writing you from work. Calm down. You're the CSI - notice how many times I'm starting and stopping this thing. It'll probably be days before I actually finish it. The only free time I have is when all the machines are running tests and there's nothing I can prep by hand in the meantime. So, not much.
And that was Warrick. Wanted to know if I was writing love letters. I told him I was. Ha! He's pissy because the sample on his glove was degraded too badly for a match. I may be a genius, but I can't do magic. Yet.
Anyway, we all miss you.
Ciao, bella.
Greg
"All" was underlined, and Sara closed her eyes tightly, until she could see spots behind her eyelids and tell herself the moisture trickling down her face was steam.
Dear Sara,
My mother would kill me if she knew I was writing this. I can hear her now - "you don't even write me at Christmas!" I would say that you don't nag as much but...naahhh.
Nothing much has changed here. Cath might be going to day shift, because Ecklie's left for the FBI. Carvallo had to bribe people with holiday pay to attend the going away party. Warrick and I didn't go, but we took some of the leftover cake out of the fridge and then went and got good and drunk at the bar around the corner. You'll remember it - it's where we took you when you made CSI 3.
Damn, girl, we miss you. There's no one to get excited about freaky new DBs, and Greg -
There was whiteout after the first G in Greg. Sara stared at the name, ran her thumb over it, and thought of all the myriad ways she could find out exactly what Nick had started to write, but the truth was, she already knew - and she didn't want it confirmed.
Greg mopes around the lab. The new CSI is big into the by-the-books way of doing things. He's also managed to piss Bobby off pretty good about something, so any ballistics stuff has to go through the rest of us. Bobby's not talking, Newbie's tight-lipped. Even Catherine couldn't get it out of either of them.
Okay, and now you see why I don't write many letters. This is boring. I'm sorry. I just...I don't know what else to say. I wish I knew now, I wish I'd known then what words to use. All I can say is that I miss you.
Jeez, okay, before this gets really absurd, I'm going to go. I've got vacation days saved up, and I hear Boston in the springtime is beautiful. Put some time aside for me, y'hear?
Nick
Sara set the letters aside on the sink and sank a little deeper into the water, up to her chin. Her legs were too long to immerse herself fully, and her knees and the tips of her toes peeked out of the water and cooled quickly. She flexed experimentally; her knees were hot, and then cooled off, and then hot again, and before she knew it, water was sloshing out of the sides of the tub and onto the bathroom floor, soaked up by the thick rug.
At the first splat of water on tile, she froze, and the momentum of the water carried a wave of peach-scented liquid into her mouth. She choked and sputtered and sat up quickly, coughing so hard tears came to her eyes. Heaving herself half out of the tub, she leaned over, still coughing occasionally.
For a few, brief, seconds, she gave in, and her body shook with sobs instead of coughs, but she slammed the flat of her hand hard against the edge of the bathtub once, twice, and then a third time, and the pain brought her back to herself with a shuddering awareness.
The cool edge of the bathtub pressed against her painfully thin ribs, and the water was now low enough so that the tips of her toes poked out no matter what she did. She curled her fingers around the edge of the sink and pulled herself out of the tub, nearly slipping in the water when she put her foot down, instead knocking her knee painfully against the toilet.
She grew cold quickly, and wrapped a towel around her shivering body. She left the letters on the edge of the sink when she left the bathroom.